‘Screamboat’ Review – A Modestly Entertaining Mickey Mouse Slasher

While 1928’s Steamboat Willie is the clear inspiration for Screamboat, Steven LaMorte’s movie also feels in the spirit of another vintage Walt Disney short: The Mad Doctor. That 1933 cartoon, which shows signs of parody, saw Mickey Mouse endure a series of booby traps and come close to death, all while trying to rescue the beloved Pluto the Dog from a sadistic scientist. Of course, this all turned out to be all part of Mickey’s vivid nightmare. It just goes to show that even before this relatively recent subgenre of public-domain horror came into being, Disney and its creator were fully capable of grotesque and disturbing imagery. Here in Screamboat, LaMorte is, in a way, acting on those impulses.

Although Screamboat is based on a ‘toon that isn’t categorized as horror, it doesn’t lack in weird and somewhat unsettling imagery. Who can forget Mickey playing a mama pig’s nipples accordion style, or swinging a cat by its tail? In general, Mickey was rather aggressive with all the animals there. Nevertheless, that comedic rudeness is intact in LaMorte’s twisted adaptation, only now with the dial cranked up to eleven. It’s cartoonish violence but with actual blood, entrails and death to look upon. It’s enough to make a Disney purist rage and a Disney objector snicker.

Like all of these public-domain movies, Screamboat doesn’t shoot for the moon; it runs with the slasher format because that’s the quickest and easiest way to debase the source material, not to mention draw an audience. The attraction is always that transformation of beloved icons into killing machines. By now, though, the ire over these movies has eased up a bit, due to their general inability to meet expectations — be it low or high ones — and because of the increasing desensitization to the formula. Even Screamboat’s antagonist is following in the footsteps of Winnie-the-Pooh’s dreadful counterpart in